The ambitious effort to create a top-shelf, daily Web TV show featuring 125 Tampa Bay business and civic leaders generated 17 hours of video content, all shot from Channelside during the week of the Republican National Convention.

Hard costs for the project were $400,000 with another $200,000 in in-kind expenses. The organization has worked to tout the success of the project as groundbreaking and bold, and not limited to the week of the RNC for its content value, much of which featured sponsors and supporters.

Web traffic — specifically the key metric of unique visitors — has been low, by industry standards. Critics shared concerns with the Tampa Bay Business Journal about the high cost and potentially low return on investment.

But given community interest and involvement in the effort, what follows, with minimal editing, is the second interview I did with Tampa Bay Partnership President and CEO Stuart Rogel and spokeswoman Betty Carlin. The meeting was a follow-up to address more than a dozen questions I had emailed in the course of my reporting.

It began with Rogel handing me what looked like a pocket baseball schedule, a programming guide that illustrates the lineup from four days of what it called “counter programming.”

Rogel: I want to share that with you. This is one of the materials we used to promote the show but this continues to be a good source to bring to the market and promote the website. The point I want to make more than anything else is that Front Row Tampa Bay didn’t end in the four days during the RNC. We started after the RNC shut down and the work continues to promote this.We continue to promote this story as actively as we can. That’s an important message here. We’re out here marketing Tampa Bay and when you are marketing anything — a product, a community, a service — it’s not a one-point marketing. You don’t do it once and then done; that’s the value. You build a campaign and a strategy. We had 70 organizations from cities to counties from Sarasota to Citrus, from Tampa to Hillsborough, Pinellas to Clearwater. We had more than 70 segments.

TBBJ: I think there are 88 segments.

Rogel: Yes, we added some, that’s right, 88. There is a ton of valuable content that can be used in a lot of different venues. Our purpose of producing this content was to promote the business and economic development stories of Tampa Bay and specifically to promote the Regional Business Plan and those industries that we wanted the community to understand. That’s why the program guide is interesting. We wanted to talk about technology, health, business, leadership, entertainment, marine and environmental activities. There were 125 speakers. That’s another interesting message: try bringing 125 speakers together and have each one of those individuals come an hour before they were supposed to sit behind the TV cameras and get prepared and ready and mic’d up and get makeup, and then to sit and spend 10 to 15 minutes talking to [hosts] Kathy Fountain and Frank Robertson about what they do and how they do it, and why Tampa Bay and why Florida is a good place to do business — that’s an important piece.

TBBJ: I’ve heard from people that were there for interviews or stopped by. At times it was busy and at others, pretty empty.

Carlin: Interestingly enough it wasn’t just the studio. In the lobby area, it remained crowded the entire time. A lot of people came to the lobby to network and talk, and we were live streaming into the lobby area. People said that was valuable because they were meeting lots of folks they hadn’t met before. It was different groups of people all day long.

Rogel: There were 450 people that registered and came through the door.

TBBJ: Stuart, what were the most memorable moments?

Rogel: Watching this lobby and watching the interactions. There was someone on the RNC weekly route that was going to all the events and he said this was his favorite of all because people were talking about real things and meaningful things that were relevant — things about Florida. This was someone from out of the region. I’m still going through all these videos and listening to all the incredible quotes. In their own way, people talked about why, not just that this is a great place to do business, but why it’s a great place to do business. That included everything from quality of life to business friendliness to the climate. I am amazed of the thread that’s spread throughout and these — and people didn’t have to say this. There are so many different pieces to this that are more than who was sitting at a computer and watching a live Web stream. We purposely created an event where people could come to and network.

TBBJ:You said to me that you wanted to do something different. I get that. But what doesn’t lie are metrics. That’s the beauty and the curse of the Web. So, what was theunique visitors number?

Carlin: It was around 5,000 that week. Up through last week, we’ve had 2,000 come to the site that are unique visitors — coming to the site watching videos.

TBBJ:I got the sense from your communication — and I heard this from others — that the way you described social media use on this effort was like it was a new thing, and it comes off that way. It’s not new. Was there a resistance to it before that?

Rogel: It’s new. It’s new the way we did it. There are three communities that did this social media command center for community marketing outreach: Kansas City for the All-Star Game, Indianapolis for the Super Bowl, and Tampa. The social media command center, which we were a big part of — we were their content from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Rogel: The spikes were huge. So that effort, combined with pushing this content out through a live streaming web TV, is new for communities. It is a new effort for communities. It’s not new to us. It may be the first time we live streamed. This was a cannon shot. It was a combination of very powerful content — a video library that people would die for that can be used in a multitude of different ways, combined with a social media center — and thank goodness Tampa Bay and Company came in and did the social media center, because if they didn’t we would have had to and we knew we needed that — and when you combine them, it’s a very powerful way to promote a community. So social media is not new, we’ve been using it a long time. But how you use that in a unique setting, and a unique way, is new.

TBBJ:But this is how that communication came across, just so you are aware.

Rogel: Perception can be reality, so that’s useful feedback. Our point in saying this is a unique way to promote a community. Now stand by — what’s key is how do we use it, continue to use it on an ongoing basis and build that content.

TBBJ:Was there any kind of RFP or RFQ for the production business on this effort?

Rogel: The concept was brought to us by Matchpoint Studios based on a concept they successfully pulled off for the Republican debates, when they live-streamed the debates last summer. Matchpoint is the production studio and the Victory Group is the group. They came to us and said they had an idea for how to tell a business and economic development story in a live-streaming setting during the Republican National Convention. We were very interested in this ourselves because we were trying to get our hands around how we were going to tell the story given the environment with so much media here, but focused on the convention itself and nothing else. That’s our experience with Super Bowls, we’ve managed through three and seen that and tested different ways to reach out to the media and it’s difficult to connect. We concluded with feedback from our leadership that we needed to find a way to tell our story. We should do something to host those of us that are here and those coming from out of town so they have place to go to — not just to hang out and have a glass of wine but to learn something from them or ourselves. The “aha” moment for me in this learning environment was when Chuck Sykes was listening to the folks from Manatee County talking about their sports cluster and IMG Academies and Roskamp Institute and all that and Chuck walked away from that saying, “I had no idea.”

TBBJ:I got that, but the question was, was there an RFP or any thought about allowing others to have a shot at it?

Rogel: At the time, we were listening to others’ ideas. The RNC was part of that, Betty was part of that, I was part of that. There were options but nothing was coming together at that point in time. There were options, but nothing coming together that was going to be meaningful. There was a branding exercise that was being undertaken and there were media guides, which were fine and we participated in and the [Tampa] Tribune stepped up and produced that. We said, you know what, we’ve heard all these things, but this is a new concept. Now, what we did is spend three or four months reviewing this concept with our partners, our leaders, potential sponsors, speakers, learning about live streaming itself, what it all meant, how it was working. So we didn’t just jump into this. We said here’s a concept that was brought to us, what do we think of it? We had folks that didn’t understand this. It’s complicated because you are talking about live Web streaming, using social media channels to push this out, converting a local theater into a morning news studio — and we had to explain this several times to our top leaders before they really started to sink into this and say, I understand what you are trying to do and start giving feedback about how to make it better. We spent several months in development.

TBBJ:Got it. Main question was about the Victory Group — they brought the idea so it was theirs?

Rogel: There was one studio that reached out to us to ask how they might get involved in this and I said, c’mon, come see us.

TBBJ:Yeah, who?

Rogel: George Cornelius at Tampa Digital. Now I saw George last week and he said you know what, you guys did a great job. I’m sorry I couldn’t get involved. But they were doing their own thing with Politico. So, it was somebody who brought a concept to us and we vetted that concept within our organization amongst our economic development partners and made a decision to go forward and we still didn’t make a decision until we knew we could raise the resources to support this.

TBBJ:How did you decide who interview?If you look at the logos at the bottom of the home page, clearly many, if not most of those sponsors got speaking time and exposure. Was that part of their demands as sponsors?

Rogel: No they didn’t demand it. Once they understood that we were trying to do a business and economic and community story, they started to see how their own story tied into that. We had some sponsors that just contributed but didn’t want a seat. Sykes said, I support you and that’s when we came in and said, how would you like to do an entrepreneur series at least one a day? He said it sounds like a great idea. But he never wanted to speak, never cared to speak. But as they started to realize what we were trying to do, they said here’s how we can tie our story to this. It wasn’t a prerequisite of sponsorship. I haven’t done the math but there are a lot of organizations that had an opportunity to speak that wouldn’t have had an opportunity to be on the show if the community doesn’t come together and underwrite the whole show.

TBBJ:All right, $600,000 in expenses, $200,000 of it in-kind. What kind of detail or breakdown can you share?

Rogel: I’m not going to share the details of the budget but I can say we spent money on producing the show, including everything from these program guides, to collateral pieces, renting Stageworks to outfitting Stageworks.

TBBJ:What did it cost to rent Stageworks?

Rogel: I don’t even remember. It was reasonable, that’s why we rented it. It wasn’t these two-three-four $500,000 dollar figures that were being tossed around.

Carlin: It was difficult to find space within proximity to the Forum.

TBBJ:You really don’t know what it cost?

Rogel: It was reasonable.

TBBJ:I am going to keep pressing you on this. I’ve talked to half a dozen different production people to try and get a reasonable assessment of what it cost to do three cameras---

Rogel: Five cameras. A full production studio and a booth upstairs. [Editor’s note: at the end of this transcript see contents of documents provided by the Victory Group a day after this interview that provides further detail about the scope of its effort. It also would not share specific budget numbers.]

Carlin: We had three remote producers going out in the field, two were pre-production to incorporate into the live feed and the dialogue. They were working for a few weeks ahead of the RNC. There were pre-promotional pieces. There was an all-day preview session in June where they set the stage up.

TBBJ:And what did you pay those guys?

Rogel: Look, we have a contract in place with the Victory Group. We looked at all the line items, they were all reasonable. If you want to call them to share that with you, that’s great, but I’m not going to share that.

TBBJ:I have to ask. That’s a big part of the criticism. You’ve given me a better idea of the wider scope so I underestimated some of the production costs, but still this cost is really a concern.

Rogel: We hosted this so there were catering costs that were built into this so it’s not just sticking a TV camera out there.

TBBJ:No, of course not, and when I was seeking quotes, it was not just sticking a TV camera out there.

Rogel: Well, that’s to my point. You have to understand this concept to get this.

TBBJ:What don’t I understand about the concept?

Rogel: It was much bigger than just someone sitting in a studio.

TBBJ:I don’t see it as such.

Rogel: Production companies don’t do that kind of work. They don’t outfit a community theater to make it look like a first-class TV set. They don’t.

If they do, there’s an additional cost to it.

TBBJ:There are. But is it this level of cost? I ran this by people who know and they say it’s high, to say the least.

Rogel: When people say how much do you pay for an ad in the Business Journal or Florida Trend, they think it’s high, too. They don’t understand what it takes to take space to be able to do marketing and promotion. I’m not afraid or ashamed of any of this stuff, I’m very proud of this stuff. The fact that we got $200,000 worth of in-kind to offset costs — we know how much it costs to pull something like this off. We had internal time at the Partnership as well. One of the things we want to do and need to do is to find a way to do this scalable in a manner that’s not as costly and time intensive.

TBBJ:Was this budget and all the line items run by your board?

Rogel: Yes, they knew how much it was going to be. We had to go to them to ask them to support it. I told them this was the minimum we have to raise.

TBBJ:Given the fact that I’m not privy to the budget, there are still questions in my mind about this cost.

Rogel: There are questions in all our minds. What I can tell you is it is expensive and it takes a lot of time, resources and energy. I just came back from a one-day event by the Florida Chamber.It was a dinner with Gov. Scott Walker with a couple of keynote speakers and it was $180,000 spent on their event. Should they have not done that? Was that expensive? There were 300 people that attended. Should they not have done that?

TBBJ:I don’t think it’s apples to apples, to be honest.

Rogel: It’s not apples to apples. This is marketing. The other thing to tell you is it doesn’t matter how much money it was because this money wouldn’t have been raised if the concept wasn’t packaged and done right and done well and presented properly. The RNC was attempting to do something. Nobody could raise money on that because the concept wasn’t put together properly so this money would not have been there to promote Tampa Bay without the right concept or the right execution. This is what you and everyone is asking the Tampa Bay Partnership to do, to be more aggressive, more effective and do bigger, bolder things. This is a bigger, bolder thing.

TBBJ:You understand, from feedback I’ve heard, people are wondering what else could have been done with that kind of money?

Rogel:There are a lot of other things, dozens of other things. We should do a survey and ask what would you do with $400,000?

TBBJ:If you do the survey, we’ll report on it.

Rogel: I will tell you that when we did the budget with Victory Group, we didn’t just accept a flat contract. They showed us X-amount of cameramen, they showed us X-amount of producers and associate producers and lighting and sound. We knew exactly what we were getting for and how many hours we were getting from these folks and what this was going to produce. It wasn’t just they came in and gave us a number and we paid.There are details on that that we had in advance before we agreed to anything. We didn’t give them a blank check. We surely didn’t do that.

We had zero dollars raised for this and a tight budget to achieve our goals.

TBBJ:What do you think is the shelf life?

Rogel: Probably three to six months. Some of it is timeless, but one of the things we want to do is refresh some of this content. One of the things we are exploring is how to take that content, refresh it and put that out and use that medium to tell our economic development story. Nobody had this content.

TBBJ:But the key question is: Will the right people engage in this content? I understand you are proud of it, but is it the kind of content people will actually access?

Carlin: That’s how we are working to repurpose it going forward. Now we have his 17 hours worth of video that’s sitting on the site but we’re breaking that apart and say, if we’re talking about applied medicine and performance, where do we have content clips that really show what’s really happening on the ground in Tampa Bay to take that with us when we go outside the region on missions and seed the ground in advance of trade shows. Agreed, not everyone will sit and watch 14-minute segments, but it’s available. We’ll use those teasers to build awareness of what Tampa Bay has to offer. It’s all content that did not exist.

TBBJ:So far, from what I can tell, of the 88 videos, a good portion has no plays. You clearly have work to do there.

Carlin: That’s because of the way it’s packaged now.

Rogel: I’ve challenged everyone in my team to view a video and pick a piece and find someone to send it to. The question becomes how does a community promote itself? Chuck Sykes said, just the fact that we’ve chosen to take on this technology and to produce this and where are we going with all this — the fact that we took on this storytelling effort and a social media push is indicative of the fact that there’s something going on here in Tampa Bay that merits more than a traditional economic development effort. That’s an intangible. We don’t have the [viral] dog video. [Commissioner] Mark Sharpe talked about wanting to go viral with this. I’d love to go viral. Fact is there’s an audience we need to reach out to and it’s not the viral audience that picks up something goofy and runs with it. How do we promote a community and how do we use these tools to do it?

Carlin: The numbers of plays on the videos give us an idea of what’s of interest. Some may not be as popular.

TBBJ:If you take those numbers as compared to cost, then that’s a high cost of acquisition.

Carlin: I think we’ve looked at it all along as not just those four days but building a library of content that we can use to promote the region and articulate those industry sectors in the regional business plan.That content didn’t exist and now it does.

TBBJ:I hear you. But you have to know that despite all that, the basic metrics, ratios and cost analysis is valid to look at. There is an ROI factor.

Carlin: It’s just a very narrow perspective and all along our goals are much larger.

Rogel: It’s not the only metric. Goes back to the impressions issue. Fact we had tens of millions of impressions––

TBBJ:That’s the last question I have. I read your description of potential impressions and I don’t know what that means — it’s very confusing.

Rogel: I’ll tell you what that means. So, if I send you something on social media––

TBBJ:I understand this notion of potential audience––

Rogel: That’s how they measure it. Potential means if you have the right people watching at the right time with the right content, you have the potential to go viral by this number.Every social media consultant I’ve seen says that’s one of the key things — potential impressions.

TBBJ:Potential is not real, it’s a speculative thing. You can get to the millions and millions very easily. Any of us can.

Rogel: We’re showing all those — that’s the reach that’s out there.

TBBJ:I understand the intangible nature and importance of general brand building. But when we are talking about the people who make decisions about corporate meetings, or relocating a business here, that’s not potential branding, that’s unique visitors and a very targeted and specific thing and not potential impressions.

Rogel: That’s a targeted audience and it takes work to reach out to that audience and you have to find out what is of interest to that target audience that would make them open something up and look or like your Facebook page.

Carlin: Social media consultants are looking at this. They are not just looking at the numbers of people. They want to know if you are connecting to influencers who they themselves have a large audience following. That’s the measure you really want to capture. Those social media metrics are designed to give you a taste of that.

ADDENDUM

What follows is a document from the Victory Group and supplied by the Partnership on Oct.11 that adds further insight into the scope of the project. They also declined to share an actual budget breakdown.

“Front Row Tampa Bay” production recap

Production crew(33 people)

1 Executive director

1 Program director

1 Floor director

2 Line producers

1 Technical producer

1 Floor producer

2 Production assistants

1 TV switcher

1 Control video

1 Control – streaming

2 Audio engineers

4 Camera operators

1 Jib operator

2 Anchors

3 Field reporters

3 Makeup artists

2 Video editors

1 Key grip

2 Production interns

1 TelePrompt operator

Technical (includes…)

4 HD studio cameras

1 15’ Jib (robotic)

1 Fully-equipped digital control room

1 Full lighting package

22,000 wattage

8 Wireless mics

Livestream connect

Real time HD capture

Live graphics

3 Full set designs and construction

Full design and construction of public areas

Full ENG package/team for capture during convention

300+ Hours of digital editing, web programming, graphic design

Productions (included…)

17 Hours of live, Livestream’d [sic] programming

3 TV commercials

12+ Taped promos in custom-built set

Web and social media banners

7 Pre-taped and edited, three- to five-minute segments

Source: The Victory Group/Tampa Bay Partnership

Alexis Muellner is Editor of the Tampa Bay Business Journal.

Industries:

Comments

If you are commenting using a Facebook account, your profile information may be displayed with your comment depending on your privacy settings. By leaving the 'Post to Facebook' box selected, your comment will be published to your Facebook profile in addition to the space below.